Quick link: Download What do I need

Introduction

I have a 17" G4 Powerbook and a Polar S720i. Polar don't support OS X in any way, so us Mac users are kind of left on our own.

This page documents my efforts to get heart rate data off my S720i using my Mac.

Credit where credit is due...

There are three other projects out there that have been of great assistance getting things up and going. These are:

• Dave Baileys "libs710" - a C library written for Linux to talk to the S710 (and other) watch. Should work on the Mac, but I had problems (endian issues on non-Intel?).
• Falk Lehmann's efforts for the Palm - some clear info on the wire protocol
• OTAG's software - proves that you can get your data out of your Polar HRM onto your Mac.

What works on a Mac, what doesn't

Here's the facts:

1. The Polar USB IR Interface will NOT work under OS X. The device is not USB compliant, and without a custom driver written for OS X (which no-one has written yet), it doesn't even get recognised when you plug it in. It does work from Windows under Parallels (and possibly VMWare), but we're trying to avoid that.
2. Most IRDA devices will work. The S720i at least (and newer models) can talk to an IRDA adapter. If your Mac has IRDA, you should be able to use that. The IR interface on newer Macs for use with the Apple Remote is not an IRDA interface and cannot be used. Any IRDA dongle that is recognised by OS X will work (TODO: get a list of known working IRDA adapters).
3. The Polar Serial IR Interface will work in combination with a USB-to-serial adapter (the one I use is this one: http://www.z-tek.com.cn/en/prodshow.asp?ProdId=023). Again, any USB-to-serial adapter that OS/X recognises will work. I got mine for $4.95 on eBay.
4. Unknown - the new Polar USB 2.0 IRDA dongle. Does anyone have one? Does OS X recognise it?

How to get the files off the watch

Use libs710 or iSmartTrain, OR

Use my python script (depends on a serial device).

What to do with the files once you've got them

The file format is pretty well documented here by Polar and reverse engineered by Dave Bailey, Robert Estes, Max Matveev and Matti Tahvonen here.

PHP Polar Tools is a set of PHP libraries to read the raw datafiles downloaded from the watch.